US House to open impeachment inquiry into President Biden

NEW DELHI: A formal impeachment inquiry will be opened into

President Joe Biden

and his family’s business dealings, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Tuesday, adding that he has directed the House committee to take action.
The announcement from the Republican leader comes as he faces mounting pressure from his right-flank to take action against Biden. McCarthy said the House investigation has found a “culture of corruption” around the Biden family.
Biden in July had mocked Republican lawmakers threatening to impeach him. “Republicans may have to find something else to criticise me for now that inflation is coming down. Maybe they’ll decide to impeach me because it’s coming down. I don’t know. I’d love that one,” Biden said at the time.
McCarthy is planning to convene lawmakers behind closed doors multiple times this week, including for a meeting to discuss the Biden impeachment. The speaker also is struggling to pass legislation needed to avoid a federal government shutdown at the end of the month.

The Republican leader is once again at a political crossroads — trying to keep his most conservative lawmakers satisfied and prevent his own ouster. It’s a familiar political bind for McCarthy, who is juggling the impeachment inquiry and the government shutdown threat with no clear end game.
Extreme politics: White House
Biden’s White House has dismissed the impeachment push as politically motivated and “extreme politics at its worst”.

“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing,” Ian Sams, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Impeachment effort likely to fail
The US Constitution empowers Congress to impeach federal officials including the president for treason, bribery and “other high crimes and misdemeanors.” A president can be removed from office if the House approves articles of impeachment by a simple majority and the Senate votes by a two-thirds majority to convict after holding a trial.
Any Biden impeachment effort would be unlikely to succeed. Even if the Republican-controlled House votes to impeach Biden — an uncertain prospect, given the party’s narrow 222-212 vote margin — it would almost certainly fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Trump is the only

US president

to have been impeached twice. He was acquitted both times after trials in the Senate thanks to votes by his fellow Republicans that prevented the chamber from achieving the two-thirds majority needed for conviction.
In his first impeachment, the House in 2019 charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son on unsubstantiated corruption accusations. In his second impeachment, the House impeached him in 2021 on a charge of inciting an insurrection following the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
The first impeachment sought to remove him from office. The second, with a trial held after he left office, sought to disqualify Trump from ever again holding the presidency.
Trump, as he has done with many investigations into his actions, called both impeachments politically motivated witch hunts.
(With inputs from agencies)